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story was taken from the book titled Ghost Sightings and was
written by Brian Innes. This is a true event where a motion
picture was created based on the facts and experiences of many people
including the ones mentioned below. We purchased our hard cover copy at
Barnes & Noble for about $15, but it is also available at Amazon.com
Place:
Aircraft of Eastern Airlines, USA
Time:
From 1972 onward
Early
in December 1972, a stewardess with Eastern Airlines told some of her
colleagues of a premonition, in which she had seen a Lockheed Tri-Star
on approach to Miami International Airport; she saw the port wing
crumple as the aircraft hit the ground, and heard the despairing cries
of the injured. The disaster would occur, she said, "around the
holidays, closer to New Year". Asked if she and her colleagues were
to be the cabin crew, she replied: "No, but it's going to be real
close" On December 29, there was a last-minute change in
crew schedules: the stewardess and her colleagues did not take Flight
401 from New York to Miami. Late in the evening, the aircraft crashed
into the Florida Everglades, all of the flight crew and many of the
passengers being killed. Among the fatalities were captain Bob Loft and
the flight engineer, Second Officer Don Repo. |
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The cause of the crash was found to be a couple of minor design faults
in the controls, and Lockheed rapidly corrected them. However, it
appears that some undamaged parts of the aircraft were subsequently
recycled in other planes. Following this, a number of mysterious
incidents were reported. One of the vice-presidents of Eastern Airlines
boarded a Miami-bound Tri-Star at JFK airport, and spoke to a uniformed
captain sitting in First Class. Suddenly he recognized that the captain
was Bob Loft – at which point the apparition vanished. On another
occasion at JFK, Loft was seen, and spoken to, by the plane's captain
and two flight attendants. The captain was sufficiently disturbed to
cancel the flight.
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Bob Loft
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One aircraft, numbered 318, was particularly affected. A woman found
herself sitting next to an Eastern Airlines flight officer who looked
pale and ill, but would not speak; she called a stewardess but, before
the eyes of several people, the man disappeared. The woman was later
shown photographs of Eastern Airlines engineers, and identified Don
Repo. On another flight, from New York to Mexico City, one of the
plane's engines malfunctioned, and it had to return to the runway and
was taken out of service. There were other incidents. A male voice on
the PA announced the usual seat belt and no-smoking precautions, when
the PA had not been switched on and none of the crew had made the
announcement. A flight engineer making the preflight checks found a man
in Second Officer's uniform, whom he recognized as Repo, sitting at the
control panel. The apparition said, "You don't need to worry about
the preflight, I've already done it", and vanished. One Tri-Star
captain said that he had also spoken to Rep, who told him "There
will never be another crash (of a Tri-Star)…we will not let it
happen".
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Don Repo
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Author's
Commentary:
These,
and many other incidents, were investigated by John G. Fuller in his
Book The Ghost of Flight 401. It is an unusually detailed case of
"protective" ghosts. It is as if the trauma of the crash,
which was part due to the fact that the flight crew were unaware of the
design faults and inadvertently overrode some of the automatic controls,
preyed so heavily on the dead officers' spirits that they had to watch
over subsequent fate of the aircraft in which the recycled pieces had
been incorporated. Fuller also claimed to have contacted Repo by means
of a Ouija Board.
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By Brian Innes
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